For a second, even the leader forgot to breathe.
The leader looked at Kael with eyes wide enough that one would think that it went beyond shock and into the realm of insanity.
The shop felt smaller. The neon felt sharper. Even Baltak's expression, normally locked into that professional, smug deadpan, twitched like a man trying not to smile at a joke he'd been waiting to hear.
"Ah, a Medium core. I wonder where you found this," Baltak smiled.
There it was. Interest. Real interest. The kind that wasn't just about profit, but about story. About a low-floor climber walking in with something that shouldn't exist in his hands.
"Just tell me how much…" Kael asked.
"That'll be two hundred cores. Since it's unprocessed. If you had processed it and cleansed it from that," Baltak said as he pointed at the swirl of darkness inside the core. "It would fetch at least a thousand Cores."
